


It's (not) about running

by Outgettingribs



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, Duck-Centric, Gen, Prophetic Dreams, dealing with the weight of unwanted heroism is tiring as it is tedious, or aka I love this 40 yr old disaster and couldn't keep myself from writing about him, pre and post first arc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-07
Updated: 2018-05-07
Packaged: 2019-04-19 21:44:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14246376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Outgettingribs/pseuds/Outgettingribs
Summary: When Duck was a kid, his mama always told him " Duck, don't let anyone ever tell you that you can't do anything." and till his teens, he believed it.When duck was eighteen, he was visited by a woman in blue who told him he was gonna do great things in the near future, and for a time he almost wanted to believe it.But now? That’s all just horseshit.---(Or how duck deals with being chosen.)





	1. Chapter 1

When Duck was a kid, his mother used to say that his birth was a miracle. 

She’d tell him they’ve waited months for this. After some big attempts were made, and when the good news came and her water broke on a hot summer’s day, they scrambled to get her to the hospital in time. 

She’d tell him, how she was pushed through the double doors of that hospital, short of breath and bleary eyed, while her husband was told to stay back by the obstetrician at the end of the hall. 

She’d tell him how his father stood in the middle of that white walled lobby for hours, worrying and wondering what was happening to his wife and kid. How he asked every minute about the state of his wife from passing nurses and doctors. But all they could offer were simple words of “It’ll be alright”, and something along the lines of “complications”, and that one was enough to send his old man into a tizzy for just a moment. 

But still he sat back and waited, prayers lending reassurance to his ears every second the hours passed. Hoping for a sign that his wife was alright and that he wouldn’t be going home short a person and a kid. 

After so many miscarriages and stillbirths, he was so afraid that this pregnancy might prove to be too much for her. But a doctor came, and raise his father’s attention to the hallway with a smile on their face. 

And when he walked into that room, knuckles white with fear and shaky fingers stumbled for the walls for a fortune of support, his eyes laid upon the smiling face of Carla. Holding what appeared to be a bundle of blankets in her hands, soft short hair peeking out over the edge and a million things crashed to the surface of his mind as he stepped closer. 

Their baby was here. A truly wondrous miracle. 

Deciding on the name was a split decision. They had settled on many, but the pull from names like Clarence and Mark were close calls for what they wanted. Still the name never really took, and so they settled for something more irregular-- a nickname of sorts, Duck. 

And thus Duck was born, and his parents couldn’t be happier. His mother was in love and they refer to him that day on as their miracle baby, a present sent straight from the lord she’d say to him. Born and blessed and thus he was. 

* * *

Duck Newton liked to believe that he was special. 

In early years, his accomplishments left him to be shown in a much more bigger light than anything his parents could have ever dreamed of. Even at a young age, he was exceedingly more pronounced with his words than those older than him, forming sentences up before he could even crawl, and learning to walk eight months earlier than others. His popularity with the family grew in size, and his parents couldn’t have expected such eminence from someone as young as their son. 

At school being at the top of his class was easy, it's like things came naturally to him without the struggles of not understanding how words were pronounced when reading a passage or how he’s able to add things up without the use of fingers, or understanding how things works, or what colors mix with what to get another color. 

These things excelled him into his years as a prodigal student amongst his peers. His teachers started paying more attention to him, praising him, even going so far as telling his parents he could move up to first grade level by the time he had finished preschool. As ones of his teacher would say to his mom, “ You’ve got a child prodigy on your hands.” 

Of course he didn’t feel like it. All the praises and adoration that came with his unusual brilliance was nice to hear and he appreciated it. But a part of him didn’t see anything special in it. And it wasn’t like the other kids didn’t notice, there were some that thought him a genius, some who thought him cool and mysterious, and some who thought he was just faking it for the attention. 

As he moved up in the grades, this only seemed to escalate even more to the point where he started having bullies gather to him. Older kids trying to pick fights, but he never really put up with any of it. 

His mama had always taught him better-- you don’t pick fights with nobody, and he’s never really felt like any of his peers were threats to him to begin with, so when they came to corner him on the schoolyard nearly every day , he’d never engaged. There was no need to. 

Some kids had landed a few strikes on him, others who'd just shoved him around, but he’d always leave without a scratch on him. The other kids had caught on after a while, and some of the bullies had backed off and moved on to better prey, but some were more persistent. 

And one day a kid named Johnny actually landed a hit that was hard enough to cut Duck’s eye, granted he was using a rock, but nonetheless that was the first time that Duck had experienced some form of pain. 

“ You ain’t as special as everyone thinks you are!” the boy had said afterwards, his gang of friends swarming around Duck like flies to a meal, watching the scene. “ You’re just a freak who gets lucky!” 

“ I never said I was special.” Duck had said, rubbing his eye and just as the scene had started, it ends, and Duck leaves the crowd behind and steadily walks away. 

When he came home that day, his mother had seen the bruise on his face and rushed to ask him what had happened. Normally he never tells her about what happens at school, for the sake of not worrying her or in experience knowing that she’d raise a storm with the school’s faculty if she had known. And he knows she would if it meant her son wasn’t being assaulted every day of his life for something completely out of his control. 

So he avoids her questions and feigns his innocence about the predicament. He can see his mother wants to talk, the way adults do when something serious happens that they don’t think children as young as him would understand. But he knows there isn’t much to say, though she can tell a lie from a truth with him, so it doesn’t surprise him none when she sees right through it. 

“ Duck Newton, now you know how I feel about lying.” she starts, staring him down with a firm gaze that punctuates her seriousness in the statement. “ Tell me the truth. What happened.” 

“ It’s nothing mama.” he says, feeling her fingers scratch the surface surrounding the pinkish ring of his bruised eye, then looks to the floor. He could never level her look with his own. “ Just us kids playing rowdy, that’s all.” 

Her eyes dim and then soften around the edges some, noticing his flinch as her fingers press to the battered skin. “Is that all it is? Just rowdy playing?” 

He wants to say so, but the words don’t find their place at the roof of his mouth, so he says nothing. 

And as she’s cleaning his face up, hands pushed to the bathtub edge, lukewarm washcloth and cream paints the outer rims of his face with an ice pack sitting off to the side of him, he looks to her for the first time tonight and says out loud. “ Do you really think I’m special?” 

She pauses mid compress, wide eyes blink once. “What?” 

“ Those kids today, they don’t think I am, and I don’t like to say that I am because it makes them angry and they come after me and say things like I’m a freak who’s just lucky. Is that what I am? A freak who’s just really lucky?” 

She stops, the wash cloth falls off his face and he opens his eye, finds her staring at him with a look he can’t quite comprehend what the meaning or feeling of behind it. But it’s not a scary one, he can tell she is thinking, and the curve of her lip twitches with the subtle twist of a muscle, shifting some to look at her son carefully. 

“ Is that what this is about? Is that what this bruise is from?” 

He says nothing. There is nothing to say about it if she already knows it. 

She sighs, and brushes a few strands of hair away from his face as a smile urgently forms on her lips, shaking her head slowly. “ Duck, don’t let anyone ever tell you that you can’t do anything. You’re a smart boy, and an exceptionally talented one at that and you’re special in ways that no one else couldn’t possibly imagine. Don’t let anyone forget and don’t let anyone tell you different. You understand?” 

He nods, and a little piece of him feels better after the fact, but it’s not enough to cement him on it. But if his mother thinks he is, then who is he is to say otherwise. 

Later on in life as he grew, during the years where elementary life was left for middle and high school, he learned to push past it, and worry about more important things. He started keeping to himself more, he’d keep ignoring his sneering peers and take to books instead. Reading was always something he was good at since before he could read things himself. Stories that his own mother would read out loud to him when he was younger were the pinnacle of what escalated him to be more interested in the outside world. Particularly that of plants and wildlife. 

His father a more outdoor person, who would take Duck out to the forest and national park nearby to go fishing and walk the trails. He always took to the dirt paved roads and learned to love the smell of the forest and it’s interesting trees and various other vegetation. 

His father did the most, teaching him how to fish and how to read the forest to help him get back home if he ever got lost. Like memorizing what paths lead to where and marking trees as a way to know your direction, help him understand and know his position from anywhere. What plants were good for food and what plants to avoid, and when the seasons changed and knowing which animals were active then. 

It wasn’t long before he had it down pat. From figuring out the names of a variety of native trees and plants to understanding flight patterns in neighboring birds to other animals and their scientific names. His father was impressed by it and liked watching the added enthusiasm that seemed to uncoil inside Duck whenever his father would take him out to the lake on Saturdays when his time was free. 

Overall he came to enjoy it, and pretty soon he’s just as good at naming different trees and certain types of resident animals better than most rangers could. Hell even better than his old man. He even starts to collect textbooks relating to Botany and Dendrology, everything from used books his dad had on a bookshelf, to library books he gets from school. 

He treats those books like his pride and joy, sucking up the information like a sponge until he’s overloaded and can’t contain much more. 

And for a moment in his life he’s happy. 

* * *

Duck is sixteen when his mom disappears. 

There have been times where she comes home later than she normally does. After all, long days at the job were things not too unfamiliar in the life of the Newtons, so it doesn’t surprise Duck when she isn’t home after the seventh hour. 

But something feels different tonight, there’s a chill in the air Duck feels as he opens the door of his home and walks the creaky floor of the hallway to the kitchen finding nothing there awaiting him. No lights, no dinner, no mom. She’s not here. 

And the feeling doesn’t escape him, even as his father sits back in the ancient chair they’ve had in their living room since before Duck was even born, smoke bubbling up into the air through the hole of a wooden pipe his grandfather used to make when Duck was too young to remember him. 

His dad normally goes to bed at this hour, after the meal is finished, but since his mom isn’t home yet, he figures his father must just be as troubled. 

“ Pa?” Duck says, through the gap in the doorway. Silence treads through the room as he stills by the corner, his foot pressed against the space of the wall as he tilts his head in. His father sits but doesn’t stir, back eased further into the seat as it creaks its nasal whine. 

It takes him but a moment to notice Duck at all, his wrinkled fingers ebbing the blackened edge of his pipe from his mouth. “ What you still doin’ up boy?” 

“ I came to ask you the same thing.” Duck says, stepping in more, now that his father notices his presence. “Shouldn’t you be retiring to bed yourself?” 

His father makes a noncommittal hum and stirs, closing his eyes slowly. “ I ain’t sleeping til I know she’s home.” 

“Come on pa, I know you know she’ll be here soon.” Duck stands in front of him, broad shouldered and dusty boots click to a stop as he eyes his father down. “ It’s probably nothing to worry about.” 

He looks just as tired as Duck, maybe even more so but he won’t comment on it anymore than he can see it for himself. And he’s not as tall as Duck anymore, having surpassed him at that at the early age of fourteen, an unusual growth spurt that even he was surprised by, but not as much as his parents had been. 

His father says nothing for a moment, eyes still closed, but Duck can see the irritable spread of veins popping forward in stress. For a moment, he looks as if he might say something but changes his course and simply shakes his head, bringing the pipe back to the folds of his lips. “ Mn, no. I’ll stay here. I don’t really care if I get much sleep tonight, so long as I know she’s coming home safely, I reckon I’ll be fine until then. You on the other hand still need to get yourself ready for the next day.” 

Duck frowns, but doesn’t try to argue anymore with his father. “ Alright Pa. Just don’t stay up too late then.” 

His father nods and waves him off. The feeling in his gut doesn’t chase away at all even as he showers and hits the sheets an hour later. 

* * *

The real change comes later when they find out what happened to her the two days after. 

When she didn’t come home that first night, Duck’s father had taken with communicating with police over her disappearance, and a search had started. On the coming Thursday, police had come to their house to announce what they had believed to be the answer. 

Duck watches his father talk with them in hushed voices, the one cop on the left occasionally glances back towards him with a look that makes the hairs on Duck’s neck stand up, and for whatever reason it is, Duck knows it’s not good news. 

Apparently mom was on the road, driving home when something rammed into the front of her car, and she skidded off the road in a frantic panic to gain control. They had found the vehicle near the wooden areas of one of the old backroads most folks nowadays don’t normally take to. The front end had been smashed, engine crushed and smoking, and the impact of its collision with the tree had smashed its dashboard windows in. 

There was blood in the road and in the car, but no sign of Carla in sight. They later tell Duck and his father, her body was found somewhere near a ditch by one of the creaks surrounding the neighboring forest, mangled and embroidered with long strokes of claw marks in her chest. 

Duck had never seen his father cry so much in his life. 

The next few days are met with grief and despondency as everyone in the neighboring homes comes to give them their mournful condolences. 

Nothing is the same after. 

* * *

Of course things wouldn’t be for the rest of his life after, but Duck wasn’t expecting whatever the hell it was that came crawling in over the course of a few months. The changes had been so small, so stealthy and insidious in their process of catching up to Duck that by the time he noticed it, it had been too late. 

Like how his dad let the dishes pile up in the sink, untouched for days, or how he forgets to make dinner every day. Or how he starts coming home a bit later than usual, smoke drenched and intoxicated. Or how he starts talking to Duck less and less until he’s just about avoiding him all together. 

Duck could make all the excuses he wanted about his father’s behavior, could buy into the stress or the depression or the grief he knows is a factor in all these bad decisions that he can see as bright as the sunrises over the horizon in the mornings where he wakes up and can’t find his father home. But he doesn’t. 

Instead, he focuses on school and work and tries not to think too much about it. Tries not to worry about the state of his own father until it comes to nip him in the neck later. 

He works until he’s old enough to afford a house of his own, and finishes school with flying colors, though no one comes to congratulate him the day of his graduation aside from his teachers and peers. No one’s there to watch him walk that stage. 

And he comes home that night and he expects an apology, he expects his father to make an excuse, say that he was forgetful, say that he was working late and didn’t have the time, say anything at all. Duck is ready to meet it with kindness and understanding. 

He finds his father drinking himself into a coma on the couch and the words clog up at the root of his tongue. 

He doesn’t know what to say at first, but the cap gripped in his hand comes out from behind his back and he stands before his old man, wondering and waiting and hoping that he notices, that he’s not asleep on that couch.That he hasn’t forgotten. 

“ Pa?” he says, and through the thinness of the room’s circulation, he swears it’s low enough to hear an echo. 

His father is still, unmovable at first, until a cough bursts from the cage of his chest and he stirs, squinting. 

“ Whu--” then his eyes twitch and he finds the silhouette in the dark--finds Duck still standing there with his long green gown and his big green cap that’s much too big for his head and he pauses and blinks some. Duck watches the way his face scrunches up like something foul just stenched up the room. “What’s with the clothes?” 

“ It’s graduation.” Duck says, trying to push down every ounce of hurt in his voice when his father doesn’t recognize it immediately. He should know about it. He’s been telling him about the event for the past couple of months, nearly every day. There’s no way he could have forgotten, there’s no way. But. 

He thinks about all those times dad had forgotten about work, and all those times he’s never home when he wakes, and those times where he forgets to pay bills and it all unsettles like an earth tremor around Duck. 

“ Oh.” His father says, too nonchalant, too uncaring, it makes Duck’s ears boil. “ Congratulations.” 

Congratulations...that’s all he has to say? 

He’s so tired of this, so tired of the extra work his father neglects to do and leaves later for him, having to watch him dissolve into the chair like some kind of malicious virus and so he thinks it’s high time for an intervention. 

So he confronts him finally about everything he’s been feeling. 

And maybe that was his mistake. 

His father’s habits and the way they’ve been getting in the way of life for him. Of his tardiness to work and the way he’s structuring himself up to have himself fired if he doesn’t shape up and do something about it. How Duck is tired of watching him waste away in that damn chair nearly everyday, and doing nothing to improve himself anymore. 

He confronts him about the stack of bills glued to the counter that he has yet to pay, confronts him about the gulf size distance between them, confronts him about his mom, and Duck tells him it’s okay to be upset, it’s okay to be angry, he’ll come out stronger, he’ll come out better, there’s no need to throw it all away because she isn’t here anymore. 

He doesn’t tell him how much it hurts to see him this way, doesn’t tell him how much this would have hurt mom if she were here to see this rotted shell of a man. 

Dad takes one long look at him after the matter, and Duck can see the shifting lines in his face, all the creases that make his dad look aged in the light, like a shadow casting over a rock in different angles, jagged yet soft in its appearance. And before Duck can feel even the slightest bit of regret for engaging him this way, thinking maybe he should have waited till his dad was more sober, his father sits up, and looks to the floor. 

The bottle shakes in his hands, and it takes Duck a moment to realize that his own father is laughing. 

He takes swigs from his bottle and sneers at Duck with malice. 

There’s no kind words for what comes next, and the visceral spit of each word scratches like a dull knife into Duck, but the motions of it sends him spiraling, lost, like he’s out at sea and out of reach of any help, and his words clogged up in his throat up like a backed up toilet while his father is a red faced beast sitting up in front of him. 

It’s none of your fucking business, why do you care so much? And his words remind Duck of what those kids would say to him on the sidewalk after school; You’re not as special as you think; and it reminds him of the way their gaze seemed to hang to him like an ant under a magnifying glass, scrutinizingly painful and vicious. 

And it's words like you’re being selfish 

And he's being _selfish._

And cut through the hazy mist of it all, he'll find some not so kind words for his mother and-- 

Duck can’t take it. 

“ I’m just looking out for you.” Duck says, and his voice is this dusty creaky thing, like he wants to cry. Because despite it all he hopes in some wretched way that his dad is lying through his teeth. “I’m just doing what mom would have wanted me to do." 

His father scoffs and tells him to fuck off before pushing past him and going up the stairs to his room. 

And that’s the end of that. 

* * *

It’s hard not to feel like he’s been abandoned, that the once easy going father he once had is still there beneath the surface, waiting to be pulled back to shore. 

But he can’t help but feel like he’s failed him in some way for not being able to see the signs before it was too late to do anything about it. 

So he does what he does best and pushes past it. 

He starts taking on more jobs because his father has stopped going to work. 

That man is a lost cause. When he isn’t at home drinking out his miseries, he’s out there making more a mess of himself at bars or otherwise making company with people Duck has never seen before in his life. 

Duck never tries talking to him anymore. As a matter of fact, he’s drilled it into himself that he should stay as far away from his dad as possible because he's more often drunk than sober, and there’s no point to it anymore. 

When he has more than enough money to land him a nice apartment somewhere far from the outskirts of this dreary little city, he takes it, and doesn’t offer a goodbye to anyone he wouldn’t miss. 

Everyone that’s either memorable has either left or eroded away with the dust, and with no notable friends, who else does he have but himself and his dad. 

He thinks he should at least make it known to him, but he doesn’t think his dad cares anymore about where he goes or what he’s doing, so fuck it and fuck him, he packs up his clothes and doesn’t look back. 

He will forget this part of his life ever happened. 

And he’ll let his father rot in this house for good. 

* * *

He has dreams sometimes, about simpler things. 

Sometimes he dreams about his life in small snapshots, like green grass, and blue skies, the warmth of his mother’s smile in the evening glow, and the way her words drip off his head like rain droplets. Sometimes he dreams about his birthdays wispy and opaque. Flickers of blue smoke, and dusted images of woodland boardwalks and hot summer days swimming in big lakes. 

Dreams about his father’s good words and the smell of sea salt and freshly cut wood.Those are the things he best knows because they’re the shared childlike version of himself he chooses not to let go of. 

But most of those dreams are unusual in their own aspect, like the ones that are so vivid they leave him breathless when he wakes, and rushing to the bathroom to stare into the mirror for an hour. About things he doesn’t understand and could never understand. But he threads through it, motors his way around it and puts them off as just that so he can find some peace of mind for once in his life. 

It’s better not to dwell on them anyway. 

He thinks this must be his mother talking, revisiting him in a way that’s incomprehensible to the human mind maybe, like makeshift ghosts, but he highly doubts it. And he’s not one to believe in the fables of ghosts and other ethereal creatures and he’s not one to believe in fairytales and things like destiny anymore. 

Had he been younger and more naive, then maybe he’d be interested. Maybe he’d still want to believe it. 

But now, those days of his life are over. They’ve gone and died in that house with his drunken father and the hot-sea blue memory of his mother. 

There’s nothing left for him there but bad memories and bad experiences. 

He’s got to let it go. 

* * *


	2. Chapter 2

He’s eighteen when he meets her. 

He’s out hanging outside the newly moved in apartment, chilling on the concrete steps. A cold drink pockets the space of his hand, relaxing and watching the stars and the street. 

Far off from the memory of the olden West Virginia, the fall air cool around him, rich with the smell of rotting leaves. Fever-warm with drinking, sleepy and pushing into himself like a blanketing wall of solitude. 

Then in the stillness of the night, there she had been, and her appearance had come in like a whisk of wind on the sublimate air. Like the rushing silhouette of a car in the distant city lights,he almost didn’t notice her till he felt the prickles of hair on the back of his neck stand up. 

A small warning, he forgets where it originates, that lets him know he’s being watched; standing aways back from the edge of the concrete step. 

His back scratches up on rocks and a dull edge digs into the nape, stunned as he finds himself face to face with what he pictures as a ghost standing mere inches from his place on the step. 

Except she doesn’t have a face. She’s different, almost ethereal. Much more so than he could ever imagined. 

He thinks he might be dreaming, thinks he might be drunk. 

But she tilts her head as his shock comes to pass, her form glowing radiant and decorous and he can’t help but to stop and stand in front of her. Check with his eyes and ignore the pinching anxiety licking up somewhere in his chest as he approaches. 

She’s angles, sharp and abstruse and out of place, sparkling like that of a glass’s reflective glint in the light and he feels like if he reaches out too far, she’ll burst right through his hand and melt away into the floor. She feels and looks very much real. 

“ The time has come Duck Newton.” she says, and Duck feels the world around freeze in the blue of the nightlights surrounding them. 

* * *

He sits at the table, when Minerva presents his sword to him. 

He looks at its weird anatomy, the way its blade seems to coil and bend like it’s made of plastic and the hilt of it melds with the same design, springy and spurious like one of those old slinky toys he used to have when he was seven. 

It’s not exactly pleasant to look at, its colors are rusted with a silver glow to it that make the structure of it ancient looking in some aspect or another. 

It reminds him of all the primordial artifacts in those big clear display cases he’d find at the museums he went to when he was young. 

Except he’s not looking in anymore; hands pressed against the glass, it’s just there lying before him on a table, waiting in the wings for its awakening by its “kindly user” as spoken by the glowing woman who watches him overlook its details. 

“You are in awe I see.” she says, like it’s obvious, and there’s a funny little tug to her voice that makes the tone of it sound giddly and full of some sense of pride. 

Duck just continues to stare at it. 

“What is this?” he asks. 

“ This.” Minerva says, her form whisking out, cascading and shimmering with idle action. “ Is your weapon Duck Newton. Your tool for the coming battle that shall be your one true sword to help you fight and thwart the challenges that may come to you as you follow your path to defeating the evil of this world.” 

And she continues to talk and she continues to enthusiastically speculate to him the values of how great this weapon is, the power it evinces. Tells him how he’s the only one that can save this world and no other person could walk the same path the universe has paved for him and none of it is making any sense. 

None of it feels real, he feels like he’s sleepwalking through this part of his life, that he’s still in a day dream somewhere. And that if he pinches himself, it’ll jolt wherever his subconscious has traveled to, wake it up and float above the surface. 

But he doesn’t stop her until he feels her shift, feels her words die off in the air and feels something heavy lodge its way into the clammy dip of his palm, and he can’t stop the flinch that comes, can’t shake off the shiver he feels when he can practically touch the warm glow of her figure, see it connect his hand with the sword and then--- 

He’s scooting backwards, back slamming against the wooden spindle. It’s a little too much. 

Duck pushes the sword back towards the center of the table. “ No.” 

And she balks and freezes for a moment, stares at him quietly before laughing. 

It feels a little like home when he hears it, and a lot like a faded off memory that makes him think of grass rotted dirt roads and hot summer boardwalks and being someplace safe. 

Where he’s not fading away endlessly out of existence or drowning in a lake of self-reproach and anger, and the familiar feeling of it unsettles a rock in his chest. 

Makes him wanna choke up and grit his teeth. He doesn’t like it. It makes him revisit old memories he’d like to stay bury deep deep down somewhere he can’t reach. 

“You are a funny one Duck Newton.” she says, after the laughter has tapered off and her form glows just a split less than it did. “Quite the impressive sense of wit about you, I must admit, your humor is dearly beyond all praise.” 

“ It’s not funny.” He says, quieter this time, and he doesn’t know where the hell his voice went but he feels cracked and heavy, like broken glass scraped with gravel. “ You’ve got the wrong guy, I’m not it.” 

That doesn’t seem to deter her. 

“But you are Duck Newton, you are the chosen one, and as the chosen it is your destiny to fulfill what fate has chosen for you to do. And what this fate has in stored for you is something that cannot go unfinished. You must understand, it is of the utmost importance that you take on this part of your destiny. ” 

“Then I reject it.” 

She flickers back, as if stunned, it’s a brief reaction in her that even in the deep blue glow, he’s somehow able to see it. 

“ But you cannot reject! You are the light of this world that shall drive out the dark, the one chosen to save it all. No one could have been tasked better than you Duck Newton.” 

He listens to her go on about it, destiny and things like heroicness and prophetic trials. Whimsically detailed, and it’s stirring up a storm inside Duck, like a low deep tremor, rumbling and awake. 

_“The universe can’t save itself without you Duck Newton”_ , and it feels like jumbled up nonsense, he can hardly comprehend it as anything else. 

“This has to be a mistake.” he says, feeling his head shake and his hands grip the table. 

“ It is most definitely not I’m afraid.” 

But it has to be, she has to be mistaken, because he’s a lot of things, but a savior of the universe is not one of them. “ I’m not, this isn’t for me, I’m sorry but I just can’t, I.. I can’t take this.” 

She pauses, the soft blue of her frame wavers like a static tv set. She tilts her head slightly, looks at him till he winces. 

“Duck Newton, are you thinking of running away from this?” 

"I’m not--That’s not what I--!” he starts, and there’s this run down unpleasant note to his voice that has him feeling uncertain about his words. 

“I’m not running.” He starts again, “I’m just not the person for this.” 

_( He thinks of his father’s words, and the deep cut gash it leaves behind in his heart; thinks about those kids in the schoolyard. Thinks of his mother and the slow unbridled downward slope of his life.)_

Minerva for a moment, looks sad, contemplating; and just the expression of it paints apart the splitting image of his mom when she was worried about him, like the day he came home with the bruise. “ Duck, you cannot run from this. Ignoring it will do you no good.” 

Duck stands up from the table, he’s heard enough, pushing his chair in. “ Well tough shit. I’m not about to involve myself in something I never asked for.” 

And he can feel her calling from behind him, can feel the rush of emotions bursting through the seams as his shaky hands find purchase with his bedroom door handle as he walks away from the scene. 

He didn’t ask for it. 

He didn’t ask for this. 

* * *

The dreams only seem to get worse after the fact. 

He spends his time more up and about in the shadow of the evening glow, than he does sleep. 

And maybe that’s a good thing. 

Because then, he can continue to escape the distant voices there that only seem to crawl out when he’s somewhere in the deep blue, dreaming about crisp green spring air and the deep forest roots. 

The ones that are bright and vivid like the sunsets that pillar over the mountains near his hometown lake, he can hear them on the wind, hear them calling his name-- _Take up your fate_. 

He can hear it in the night, where the forest is dark and damp with shadows that follow his every step, wretched howls that sing in the shade and lean hungry things with red eyes and crooked crocodile grins-- _Only you. Only you can stop this._

His chest heaves with smog and he finds himself at an archway, parting in a dusty dirt road and something in the wind nips at his ears as he shivers-- _You can’t run from this._

He does it anyway, just because he can. Because dreams are dreams, they’re easy to escape, he knows they can’t hurt him there. 

But it never stops making him feel vulnerable anyways, never stops making him feel like escape is but a fleeting fool’s paradise, nearly out of reach and slipping through the cracks in his fingers. 

Dreams feel like dreams until they feel like they don’t anymore. 

And in the daytime, he finds that escape is just a hopeless construct. 

Minerva still tries, her tricks and wavering figure blink in and out of his vision every so often. Her words still sing the same tune, but the added enthusiasm that she once used is gone. Tone torn loose like jagged angles, sharp but pleading. 

And the sword, that damn thing, speaks to him every so often in a haughty voice that grates against the drums of Duck’s ears. They scrape and knock at his patience till he can’t handle their incessant demands and is put away like a discarded toy in a corner of his cupboard, untouched and left to the dust and painted ceramics. 

He will keep on running even if it means losing some of his sanity first. 

* * *

It is hard to find time for studies, but he manages, and eventually he gets his degrees and settles for a job that’s nearby, somewhere back in a town he knows as Kepler. 

This town is quiet, quieter than the home he knows, and it’s nicer in terms of places he’s looked into for jobs. 

He’s gonna be a ranger at a local national park. The Monongahela, a place he feels is more welcoming than any place he’s ever known, a thing that only dwells in his dreams, vividly bright and brilliant. Kepler is nice in its own regard, but it’s the forest that he loves the most. 

It’s serene, where the trees grow at tremendous size and the grass is mossy beneath. Having spent his time studying ecology for so many years has helped with this. And with prior knowledge to how some trees grows, or what flowers grew near the river and which grew further out into the fields or how the fish traverse the rocky stream during their timely migrations, and the way he’s able to see when the seasons change are good things. 

He’s come to grow accustomed to it all the more he walks along its trails and memorizes the routes and its winding rows of trees. 

This place is a home he wouldn’t trade in for the world. 

And he is happy to be here. 

* * *

He walks along the riverside, air thick with the smell of mud and freshwater. 

It soothes him, to walk along the river bank, sky brilliant and quiet, makes the knots in his shoulders find relief and the wind feels good on his skin. It's quiet this time of the morning, early and the water is glassy and gold, rippling with reflected sunlight. 

If he could, he would run away to here, disappear into the forest and never come back. It’s better than having to face some form of reality, the kind that keeps telling him in his dreams that he’s special and he’s made for great things. 

He used to think his mother was right about being special, that maybe he was cut out for something bigger than this. Bigger than just a lonesome ranger in a park. 

And maybe back then, he might’ve still wanted to believe it, but as of now, as he reaches his mid twenties and stands by the shore and thinks on it. 

That’s all just horseshit. 

He’s not a superhero and this is not a comic book. 

This is not one of those fairytale stories Mama use to read to him at night and if his father had said so who is he to not believe it. He lost that little bit of fate he had in him years ago, it’s gone now, just like she is. 

All those fantasies she used to talk about don’t feel as phantasmal and extravagant as they did when he was young. 

Stories like that used to mean something special. 

And he thinks of heroes and he thinks of those stories that talk of catastrophe; a man finds a lantern that crafts him a ring and is flung into a war but rolls out of it a born hero and- 

He thinks of heroes like those stories where a boy made of gold and steel, crash lands to earth and is made into a symbol later; bound for greatness. 

Or the story of a boy finding a helmet in a tomb, ancient and glistening weakly in the sun. Magical and mysterious and— 

He remembers about all their stories and their happier endings and thinks that’s not the kind of stories built for someone like me. 

Here is the world, colorless and dull in the early morning light, and Duck is ankle deep in the dew of Kepler early autumn september, stewing over things he probably should have abandoned by now. 

His mama isn’t here anymore to play the comforting consoler, and even if Kepler is just a long ways from being something remotely close to resembling a home, it’s still much more preferable than his old man’s house will ever be. 

And stories like that tend to exaggerate fiction. Where the people are always finding things themselves, or things are always finding them. Magical objects that can transform the world. Prophetic destinies and entwined fates. Swords that can talk, umbrellas that can eat and breath magic. It’s bullshit, all of it. 

Minerva still comes even as her efforts have proven to be fruitless time and time again, keeps following behind him, her words a fading whisper in the dark. 

_( You’re going to be something amazing.)_

But he knows he’s really not. 

Because he’s always known it. And maybe his father was right, maybe they did praise him too much, maybe he wasn’t as great as they all thought him to be. But he pushes those thoughts away because it just doesn’t feel good to remind him of it. 

He’s not cut out for destiny. 

He’s not cut out to be the chosen, he doesn’t want to be special or anything else like it. He just wants to be himself-- Be Duck- Be normal.. 

Or something close to it. 

* * *

He’s reaching his early thirties and Minerva’s visits start to slow to a crawl. 

He barely hears from her anymore, and the sword stays stuck in the cupboard, untouched but not happy in its predicament. 

Normalcy starts to flow back into his life. 

But there’s a hole somewhere in his chest, empty and wrong, like he’s missing something important. 

He chooses to ignore the feeling. 

* * *

He meets a man at a local bar. 

It’s one of those dingy rustic ones, that aren’t as clean but still has that friendlier atmosphere to it that makes up for most of its lacking details. 

He sits at the bar, fever warm with a cold drink glue to his hand as a older man settles down to the right of him. Short neat hair and a big fancy coat slimmed around his edges, with a smile that seemed to glint out against the dim lights in the room, and a well manicured beard to match. 

Duck catches himself staring, squinting, as if trying to discern why their face seems familiar in some way before the man notices and he quickly turns away. 

It wasn’t quick enough, because as soon as he returns to his drink, feigning some form of indifference , the man says. 

“ Something on your mind there pal?” 

Duck takes one sip and looks right up at the man, blinks out of his thoughts. 

The man is grinning at him, all teeth and the gray hairs that stick out in his moustache blend under the lights, patchy tan skin and sharp brown eyes. Duck swears he’s seen them somewhere before. Maybe one of the tourists from his tours, but that seems unlikely. He’s more inclined to recognize a few faces even if it has been a couple of days. 

“ Uh..” he starts, unsure of what to say, then shakes his head. “ Sorry, you just looked familiar is all. Thought I recognized you from somewhere.” 

The man laughs, and it’s hearty and wild like a burst of fireworks, and waves them off flippantly “Ha! It’s nothing my dear man, I can understand, I tend to have that reaction from certain people around here.” 

“Oh.” Duck settles down, pushing himself further back into his seat. 

The man finishes laughing and eyes him down from top to bottom. “Say, aren’t you that new ranger at the park? I think I remember you. You’re uh-" he pauses, fingers scratching at his beard. “ Something- like a food brand? Or at least your last name is, ah but it eludes me. Was it Fig?” 

“It’s Duck.” Duck corrects, curling his fingers around his drink. “Duck Newton.“ 

The man makes a noise, promptly snaps his fingers together as if having an epiphany. “ Right! Right! That’s it! Duck Newton. See I knew I saw you from somewhere!” 

“ Mhm, I work with the National Park-The Monongahela. The uh, one around here that’s not too far from home. You’ve probably seen me there.” 

“ I certainly have. Word sure does get around pretty quickly, though sadly I never got around to meeting you in person. Until today that is.” The man says, leaning in. Hands come together and tuck under his chin, a grin cracking against the surface of his lips as he turns to Duck with slightly piqued interest. “So Duck Newton, what an interesting name. Any particular reason why you have that name? Parents wanting to be creative?” 

“ It’s a nickname.” Duck says, “ Something they thought would be cute but ended up being a regular thing I guess.” 

“ Oh a nickname? So there’s a story.” 

“Not really.” Duck says admittingly. 

“Pah!” the man waves “ I’m sure there is. A name like that doesn’t just come around without a story to merit. It’s good and builds a sort of mystery to one’s self about the usually interesting kind of life they have to tell. Like a piece to them that’s special and unique, and with someone like you, that seems to fall in your corner.” 

“ Well I’d hate to disappoint your probable conceptions of me, but there really isn’t anything special about it.” Duck says, and gives the man a glance before going back to take another sip. “ There isn’t much to tell about me.” 

“ Oh come now, everyone’s got a story to their name. Even if it’s minimal or not, there’s always something to tell about a person through the means of the nicknames they’ve pick up in life. Sometimes there’s ones that are special in their own merit, but some serve as a secret to be told. There’s a type of pulchritude to it that makes people all the more inclined to enter that space and question it themselves. Like a mystery that adds more to a person, you know?” 

Duck blinks at them, sitting still, “ Well that’s uh, a rather poetic way to put it.” 

“It’s as poetic as I can make it sound. But oh where are my manners.” he says, laughingly as his drink tilts in his palm and he takes a sip. “ I’m here gauging you for information about yourself when we haven’t even been properly introduced. My own mistake.” He stretches a hand out for Duck to shake. “The name’s Ned, a pleasure to meet you.“ 

Duck obliges, shaking it gingerly. “Ned huh?” Duck tries that name out in his head, twirls it around his tongue and a memory snaps back at him. “ I think I’ve heard that name before. Ned Chicane right?” 

Ned quirks a brow up in surprise, “ Oh so you have heard of me? Well isn’t that a pleasant surprise. Though I can’t say I’m taken back by it. So how you found out about me? ” 

“I figured I’ve seen you somewhere around the park before. I don’t take to recognizing a majority of my visitors but I’d say you’ve popped up there quite a few times now. Though I’ve never had the chance to properly meet and ask about you yourself.” 

“ Mm, small towns work that way.” Ned says, after taking a gulp from his cup. “You either know everybody around, or you’ve heard the rumors of them from passersby, one way or another.” 

Duck nods and takes to his own drink, the buzz of the beer feels good going down his throat, idly mulling everything over. 

“ So tell me Ranger Newton.” Ned asks, “What brings you to a dreary little bar like this?” 

“Not much. I’m really not much of a drinker but, tonight’s not really a good night for me.” 

“ Oh?” 

Duck goes quiet for a moment, mouth suddenly feeling dry and arthritic, he tries licking his lips, shaking his head slightly. 

“It’s just.. Been uh, uh , a busy week for me is all.” 

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Ned turn, shifting in his seat. He can’t read the expression, but the noted tone in his voice perks up with curiosity. 

“ Why’s that?” 

Duck doesn’t know what it is, but when asked that question he can’t stop but think to himself how the last few weeks had been treating him. Given with his job and home, things have been more hectic than he lets on. Not that he actually talks about his life with anyone around, but Ned seems like a nicer man, and he doesn’t see anything wrong with opening up a little. 

So he does. 

Ned is a nice man, much more nicer than Duck gives him credit for, and quite the interesting talker himself. They talk and it goes on for a good half hour, and it’s relayed back to Duck as something unexpected really. 

He finds a calming connection to Ned in ways he really shouldn’t when meeting another person. And maybe that’s due from getting up in his age himself-maybe. Ned is old by the strays of grey peppered out through his hair and beard, established sharp eyes that ooze with enigmatic vigor the likes of which Duck could never in his life ever have. 

But there’s something just beneath the surface of it, that seems to draw him in somehow, engage him where else he wouldn’t really have with anyone he’s ever known and-- for the first time in his life, actually enjoy it- the company he’s keeping here. It’s nice. 

And maybe that’s why they click so well. 

Eventually after the two hours have passed, Duck feels the ever so soundless call of sleep pry at him, Ned is pulling the cotton of his coat over his shoulder, eyeing him carefully as Duck gets out of his seat, ready to leave. 

“ Say, you said you’re new here right?” 

Duck nods, “ I did say that, yeah.” 

“ Why don’t I..” Ned says, thinking, “ Ah, why I don’t I show you around the place. My shop is a little ways down from here. Ah you’ve heard of it yes?” 

Duck looks up. “ You mean that dingy little place out back out northern?” 

Ned snorts, “ Well I don’t know if "dingy" is the right word to use but to each is their own.” 

“No I don’t suppose I’ve ever been there.” 

Ned grins, pulling his coat over his shoulders, “ Well how’s a little late night tour feel for you? I could show you a lot of neat little exhibits that we have. Something to pique your interest in the unstudied wonders of the far unusual phenomenons our world holds.” 

“Phenomenons..” Duck repeats, “Like what?” 

"Well like stories of the unknown. Fables and fantastical evidence of magnificent creatures and cryptids that walk the earth and all the strange occurrences with things deem bizarre in the eye of the ordinary. Literal exhibits of horrid creatures of the night and monsters unseen by the public eyes but not missed by those more fortunate enough to meet them.” 

“ What like Bigfoot?” 

“Well that’s just one of many things the Cryptonomica holds among its other purpose. Supernatural would be the term. Is that something you believe in?” 

A vision of Minerva pops into his head, her glassy glow and notched angles peering at him in the distance. His mouth settles into a frown. “ No. I don’t believe in any of that.” 

Ned snorts some, fixing his hands over the collar of his shirt. “ I figured as much” he says, “ You don’t strike me as the type of person who believe such things and tentatively finds excitement in seeking out the unknown and its many mystifying secrets. But nonetheless, it never hurts to show my work anyways.” 

“You mean your little museum? Is that what you want to show me?” 

The other man smiles and raises a brow, teeth bright under the light before fiddling with his keys and laughs to himself. “ Well if you’re feeling up to it that is. It’s no pressure.” 

Duck thinks for a moment, clicks his tongue to the roof of his mouth and mulls it over. He has nothing to do later, save for some paperwork and being at home with his cat. Which is a nice thought, but how often does he ever get out to explore more of this town. 

“ Sure.” 

He lets Ned lead him outside the bar, walking inches behind. Just being outside is enough to ease some of the awkward tension he feels wafting off of him in waves now, swallowing some as they walk. 

“Feeling nervous? Ned says, looking back. “The museum can be quite uh, terrifying experience at night.“ 

Duck snorts, “I'm sure I'll manage. 

The man laughs, rusted and full of volume.Duck thinks it's nice and they walk together into the night. 

* * *

Duck finds himself coming back to Ned a lot. 

There’s something about the man and his charismatic appearance and quality that has Duck tongue tied sometimes, leaves him feeling weightless underneath, probably due to the fact that he’s the first of something Duck hasn’t had in a long time. 

So he comes to his house somewhere around seven in the morning a couple of weeks after their initial meeting, just cause he knows that Ned won’t complain if he knows it’s him, and mostly because it’s nice having someone to confide in when he’s off his hours for a day or two. 

“ Care to take a walk with me?” he asks, and he feels his voice shake. 

Nonetheless Ned nods and follows behind after a few minutes of getting ready. Duck waits out for him by the side of the street, eyes glued to the sharp pale blue of the skies. 

They walk out to the river through a trail only Duck would know, and they chill for a moment enjoying the sunrise. Even in the glow of the morning sun, the water’s still dark, a rippling black that makes it appear almost gemlike, sparkling and Duck squints to adjust his eyes to the shells and plants that lay obscure at the bottom of the water, cloaked from sight. 

On a rare day like this, they talk about themselves. 

They talk about a lot of things, most of it devolves into things they’ve done in the past, their ways of getting from there to here and how it changed them. The conversation pushes from topic to topic every now and again, but one topic in particular stays untouched with Duck, and that’s family. 

His family, bless his father’s heart, is not much considered worthy of a conversational starter nowadays. When the topic had came up one day, Duck had immediately shut it down, maybe not as abruptly, but subtle enough that he didn’t have to revisit it later when he was sure Ned would try to pry it out of him anyways. Like most people do when they want to learn something about him. 

But Ned, to his surprise ( and maybe not so much there either) understood his feelings. Families can be a heavy topic for some. Ned knows that himself, his reaction to it isn’t as animated as it is with other things, and he’s nonchalant and vague with it; it’s no big deal to him he says. 

But Duck can see the way Ned gets green around the eyes, and how his words trip up and follow a more extremely delicate manner from how he normally talks, and that’s enough to let him know. 

Ned feels the same way as he does, probably from different degrees, but they still float on the same wavelengths. So they both leave it alone, no one needs to know, at least for now. 

There’s so much oversharing going on between them, that Duck feels as though his secrets don’t mean of much value to him anymore than Ned’s, and for that he can at least be somewhat thankful for. Having it all bottled up over the years has left him feeling lost and isolated. To finally have someone to talk to about these things feels refreshing in the sense that he can talk about himself without having to worry about strange looks or hackneyed responses. 

And he learned a lot from Ned. 

Like how he’s spent the past couple years here in Kepler, and how he’s been a traveling man from all over. Learned about all the extravagant stories he could tell Duck about his travels. Some more wilder and implausible than others, but Duck’s so intrigued by most, that he never bothers to fact check if any of these stories really took place or not. 

And there’s Duck again, who hasn’t said much about himself in terms of what he can say, and yeah maybe some of the answers he’s given weren’t even all that much true anymore, and maybe he’s lying his way through it and his family isn’t really all that bad. It’s just that bad things had driven their way into their once happy home and from there, things just weren’t the same, and he has started to shred himself slowly away from that memory. 

He’s moved on from that because back there things were suffocating and it seemed only natural to want to get away from it wasn’t it? 

Ned takes notice of the silence between them, walking ten paces away from Duck, eyes stormy black in the light. “ You okay?” 

“Yeah I’m fine.” 

They find a bench and settle there and Duck finds himself drawn to the atmosphere of their environment. He stares out at the deep deep blue of the water, now more lit by the sun’s glowing weight, riding low with the mountains. 

The colors remind him of formless blue figures and distant whispers, like his most older visions, which he hasn’t had in a while. But that’s not really something to think about. 

So instead, he takes out one of his own little notebooks that he likes to keep around and draws out his best sketch of it all. Pencil worn down as he presses it into the paper, and Ned hums a soft tune under his breath. 

“Whatcha drawing?” Ned says, after a moment of silence has passed, he kicks up his shoes against the dirt paved trail beneath their feet, leaning over to better look. 

“ Just the scene of the lake.” 

Once he has about a good level of it, detailed and scribbly under the sunlight, he moves one of his arms out of the way and passes it to Ned. 

Ned leans over to take a peek, catch a moment in between and Duck hears a noise of astonishment. 

“ Holy crap!” 

He flickers a glance over to them. “ Is it okay or..what?” 

“Okay? It’s amazing!” Ned exclaims examining it over more. “ You never told me you could draw.” 

“ Yeah, just a little bit though.” 

Ned raises his brow incredulously.” Just a little? Duck this is great!” 

“I mean, I’m no Picasso or anything but I’d say I’m pretty good as far as penciling it down.” 

“ Ah, but modesty is the color of virtue. Your work is well crafted, and you even got in some of the mountains. I gotta say though your talents with abstractism reminds me sorta of uh.. uh..” 

“ Like Claude?” 

“ I was gonna say more Georgia O’Keeffe but hey if the shoe fits..” 

Duck smiles at that, turning back to watch the sun. Relaxing like this, he doesn’t feel as cold as when he is at home, it’s like being in the forest,calming and preserving. He doesn’t think there’s anything better. 

But then Ned makes some corny ass joke about “wanting to be drawn like one of those french girls”, utterly ruining the moment and Duck makes a face about it, rolling his eyes, but lets the humor of it roll off his shoulders while Ned beams with the sun crackling bright above the lake. 

* * *

The following week, he gives Ned the sword. 

The sword still feels heavy in his hands even as he pushes it into the outmoded palms of Ned Chicane. The older man blinks weirdly at it, like he doesn’t understand what it is, examining the craftsmenship. 

It should go here. He thinks it’s probably the most fitting place for it anyways and if there’s one thing he can trust when it comes to Ned, it would be helping him get rid of something he doesn’t need. 

Still it feels somewhat wrong to hand it over, like he shouldn’t be doing this. A direct refusal plots space into his head and he hesitated at first. There’s a tremor in his hands Duck doesn't notice till the weight is gone and Ned is lifting it into his hands, nimble fingers testing the hilt and coiled blade. 

He tells him to get rid of it and Ned gives him a look, deep and murky like the ocean, and Duck feels like choking, drowning in it. 

He doesn’t question him about it. Ned is good like that, smart about it. 

He knows Duck probably won’t tell him otherwise, so he takes it and not a word is said about it afterwards. 

It feels safer out of his hands, Duck has to keep reminding himself that he doesn’t need it anymore. He never needed it, and the sword was annoying anyways so why does he feels so out of place watching it go with Ned. 

He should feel relieved that it’s gone, happy that that part of his life is over with, swept away under the rug like the rest of it. 

It should feel good like a weight being lifted off his shoulders, should feel nice to have it out of his life for what he hopes is a permanent one. But somehow, it doesn’t. 

And he leaves that shop feeling satisfied yet empty at the same time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have this head canon that duck can sense the supernatural.  
> like he has this intuition that acts like an alarm in his brain whenever something supernatural is nearby. ( like in the form of like headaches and the hairs on the back of his neck standing up etc..)  
> It's something he picked up early in life, but he never paid much attention to it until recently.
> 
> Also thanks justin for confirming my dream theory


	3. Chapter 3

Things don’t escalate until Duck is well into his mid forties. 

The distinct fiction of his dreams weaves out in rhythmic waves, like he’s been casted out into the deep sea. Flashes of telltale visions washing up against him like a tidal wave and he finds himself drenched in the distant memories of past things he’d never thought would come back to haunt him again. 

But they come back more vivid this time, as they sometimes do on off nights when the moon is full and its gaze seems to shrink the world below, trembling under the weight of it like a deer caught in headlights. 

He has a vision one night, something he should be used to. Because connections like that don’t just go away, he’s tied to them like a ribbon caught around a wandering balloon, shifting into the empty skies. They have grown with such accustomed familiarity, so much so, that it surprises him some when this one isn’t like the rest. 

Oddly wired out, it’s less picturesque and more rotoscope, like bending rotating shapes that fit over the blurry spots he can’t see. 

He dreams about an archway, some place along a lonely path in the woods, deep and cabalistic. A pathway he doesn’t recognize and the world is still around him, almost as if at a loss for words or any kind of movement, and he is still with it, unable to move. Frozen in place until the white of the world washes him out completely and he awakes to the burning light of his lamp sitting idly on his desk. 

It’s been so long, the vision doesn’t even register as anything less real to Duck. 

* * *

The night is still full when he’s back on patrol. 

Even as the forest is calm, and the trees swing with patience against the breeze, he is still on edge, uneasy breaths and shakiness in his fingers press the flashlight closer to his chest, shoulders tense as he walks down the winding path. 

He doesn’t know what it is about the night, but it’s things like how the leaves below his feet leave behind no crunch or how the sway of the trees seems to halt altogether despite the breeze and the way the noise of the forest, something he’s so used to, something he cherishes deeply, seems to sink beneath whatever bed of silence it’s found itself under and he is struck with a sense of panic in him he hasn’t felt before in a long time. 

And somewhere in the dim blue of the night he watches something rise from the corner of his eyes beneath the bustle of trees and freezes in place. There stood nothing there before, but as his light guides shape to its form, it’s pretty clear what it is that lies just a couple of feet beneath a circle of barren soil. 

Large in size yet it’s still in the darkness like a mountain of shadows. 

The shape is large and that shadow is a bear. Looming and sinister in the darkness that shades behind it like a billowing blanket. 

Except the bear is funny looking, and twitches and shifts its muscles like it’s hurt, a horn in its shoulder, a maimed leg here, except it’s not one but many and its many eyes pierce through the dead weight that slithers beneath the shadows surrounding Duck, lifeless and rotting and he feels like he’s seen this all before somewhere. 

_( Like a particular nightmare, its inky-black eyes scanning no surface, little things like a monster’s smile, all black venom dripping out the holes in its mouth. Needle sharp teeth and flat hungry eyes that tear through the night like a knife gliding through paper. but its eyes aren’t red and its teeth aren’t needle thin like he’d imagined it. )_

His light guides over the patches of wet fur and a mass he can’t quite describe as anything less than scary and in the darkness it shifts unnaturally towards him. 

There is something shining like hot red across the ends of its teeth, staggering cruel intent dragged in each step of its crooked legs as it lumbers towards him, and he can see its eyes glowing gold under the limited shine of the light. _( but that’s crazy. Bears aren’t that big, bears don’t have that many eyes, bears don’t move that way- it’s crazy---)_

He does the only thing he knows how to do and that’s run. 

He runs until the scenery around him melts together into a surrealist painting, runs until he gets cramps in his side, in his chest, in his thighs, he keeps running till the radio in his hand hisses and sputters with dying life and he feels like laughing, almost hysterically. Because this whole thing is ridiculous. 

He came out here to find someone, find a person and Minerva's warm filtered sea blue light washes out the scene of his vision as she comes, guttural sighs pushing through the trees around him like thunder and every time he blinks he sees it. The rows of sharp teeth glinting in the glow of the flashlight. It's piercing yellow eyes following his form, angry and lifeless. 

He’s never used a real gun before, sweaty and warm in his hand, and at this point he isn’t about to but thinking back on it now, he feels mildly stupid for thinking throwing it would have worked, but he’s not one to harm the wild life, it’s not in his nature to. 

The darkness overwhelms him, he breathes it in, chokes on it, lets his ribs ebb away the tiny shreds of breath they can take in before he’s nearly out of breath and losing every place of light he can grasp a hold on to. 

It shouldn't be able to see him, hiding in the shadows as he is, but its eyes pin him down like an ant under a magnifying glass, frying in the sun. _(And it's crazy, it shouldn’t be able to see him, his heart's hammering against his ribs, it's crazy-everything about this is crazy)._

Its monstrous roar follows swift behind and the sweep of the trees betrays his way of finding the path. He can feel himself trip and fall forward, catch his chin with the dust of dirt. 

But he keeps on running, because he doesn’t know what else to do. 

And he keeps going till there’s nothing but flashes of light, and the world tilts on its axis, spinning so fast, he feels like he’s flying. Delirious and high above the ground before gravity touches home on his chest and he’s falling into the brilliant yellow fray of an arch. 

* * *

All night all he can think about is that it’s all happening again, and just the thought of it makes his mind hazy and painstricken, like a thick creel of static, blocky, like the funny numb feeling he’d get when a chill rolls over his spine; like ice melting away in the sun. 

It’s all happening again, and like all the other times, his predicament takes him a while to fully sink in. 

And, as like all the other times this has happened, he tries masking it down the only way that he knows how. 

_( Here’s something that he never forgot - the kind of panic he masks, the kind only known to him in brief childhood iterations - like when he was a kid and nearly drowned in the lake he and his dad used to fish in on hot humid days. When the fear was overwhelming and he couldn’t flap his arms quick enough to get back to the surface…)_

This is nothing like that. Not the strange, numb panicked shock he felt that day, like the memories of crushing trauma that he keeps behind the closed door of his mind. 

No the fear that floods him when he realizes what is happening is cold. It feels funny, suffocating like the crush of pressure on his chest, like water pushing in and he’s lost in the shades of deep blue, like that of lungs filling with the taste of the sea, his head slipping under the waves, it makes his throat burn and his chest tight. It makes his veins throbs with airless desperation, even when he tries taking a deep breath. Even when he tries making sense of it all. 

That's what his mother always told him to do, when he was scared, but he breathes deep and he counts to ten and finds that he is still here. 

Still here before this arch, before the blinding blue of Minerva's calm patient form. Still here before the world behind the veiled shape of the archway. Still here when he’s transported back hat and all before the astonished eyes of familiar faces and he opens his own and he counts to ten and he breathes in deep. 

He tries to mask it all under the guise of formality. 

Maybe it still shows on his face, when he’s walking towards the girl with flames still lit in her hands, this feeling like drowning, cold salt on the tongue, because she looks up at him with this funny look in her eyes that makes his teeth clench. Expecting a question. 

He is glad when all she does is smile and put out the flames in her hand. 

* * *

* * *

They’re all sitting together at the table, revising over plans when Duck thinks he’s had enough. 

“ Listen.” he says, and Duck can feel the weak tremor of his voice vibrate off the ends, feel his hands shake as he stands up and earn the attention of the others. 

“This has been...well, I was going to say “fun”, but that would be inaccurate. I understand what you’re doing, but you’re gonna have to count me out on this one. Continue with your exposition if you’d like, makes no difference to me, but I gotta be getting back to work.” 

Mama eyes him down with an intenseness he’s only ever seen in particular birds of prey, the ones that sit back and idly await for some kind of opportunity, circling and buzzing in the air. 

“ And what exactly is your work?” 

He tells her it’s putting in the effort he’s made that’s built up a status about himself here in Kepler. About all the ways he’s kept the place safe and how the importance of it has left the empty holes still punctured in his heart to be filled. He’s a ranger here in this park, he knows what his duty is, he knows what he’s been called out here for. 

He knows what’s wrong with the bigger picture here, what’s at stake. But he also knows that out of the four of them here, he’s the least qualified for this type of thing. 

He is fully aware of the ramifications of what could happen if he doesn’t but he also doesn’t care to involve himself in the one thing he’s been running from almost his whole entire life. 

The saddle shouldn’t be passed onto him as a burden to bear. 

She seems undeterred however, even as he tells her this, and her words stay cupped behind the curtains of her knuckles as she leans forward in her seat, idly listening. 

The sharp lines in her face make her look as though nails had been dragged deep into the skin, harsh and abstruse under the light. 

“This ain’t fuckin’ nature, Duck.” Mama says, pointing a thick finger to the drawing on the table, her gaze never leaving his. “ This is something from somewhere else that came into our world to destroy it. To destroy the forest and kill everything inside of it. That sounds like it fits your job duties one hundred percent…” 

“ And I’m just a guy!” He shouts, without meaning to. His voice finding some form of indignance, sticking to his tongue like barbed wire and it stings. It feels like lemon juice in a cut, a lot like being lost in a murky ocean, and he chokes back anxiety pushing up from the pits of his stomach. “ I’m just Duck. That’s all I am!” 

And he tells her the truth, he tells her how he feels, how he’s been feeling since the night he walked through the archway. Since the night of Minerva's return, since the night he ran into that thing, and how everything so far surrounding his topsy turvy life has taken a turn for the worst. 

And he finds that he can’t stop himself, can’t delete the words. They’re spewing out like jumbled up strings, he feels his cheeks heat and his hands clench and he doesn’t even know if he’s shaking or not, but it must show in the way the table trembles under his knuckles when they tap and pound at the surface with undignified distress. 

And Aubrey speaks, and her words are soft around his jagged edges. They tug at something beneath the surface and he finds there’s something unpaired about it. 

In her voice--something like understanding that makes him tight lipped and opened to listening. 

And she says things like we can do it. 

And she says it’s okay to be scared. 

And she says doing something's better than doing nothing. 

And maybe she’s right, maybe something is better than nothing, and maybe he was too afraid to confront that part of himself he’s kept buried below for so long. Having ran from it for years. Maybe it’s time he pushed past his fears, do something about it. 

Maybe..Maybe not. 

It’s not enough to cement his feelings on the matter, but it’s enough to get him to stay and listen. 

So he does. 

* * *

He finds himself back in the Chicanerie. 

He hadn’t been here in weeks, though it felt like years. Just from walking amongst the dusted cases, and back rows of items and stapled together creations, he finds that he doesn’t spend as much time here in the company of Ned as he used to. 

They used to do so much here, and nights were spent chatting and making a fuss of themselves over drinks and fair games of chess. It feels like a distant memory now, wiped away and hidden beneath the surface. 

All things melded from the mind of Ned that he could only describe as undoubtedly creative, give off nostalgic vibes. He feels it burn somewhere in his chest , less tense, more familiar, the distant visions of home in his dreams. 

He finds himself standing before the case, and it’s like looking back into a mirror, like looking into the past and seeing his younger self come before him and he can still picture the day he first got it. 

He was twenty-two and his birthday had just arrived and on the way home, where he was fever-warm from a drink, full and sweaty from the sun’s hot rays, he found Minerva waiting for him at the step. 

She had beamed at him and gesture for him to follow her in . She was persistent about it, said it was urgent and she already had such a small window for time to be there, so her movements were quick and he had barely any time to even ask her what it was. 

And the rest was history. He can still remember how it had made him felt when he first touched it. Like lightning to the touch, and when he first held it, how heavy it had felt in his lanky hands as he tried controlling it. It was foreign and yet unmistakably-- 

It was his. Something crafted and molded to fit his hand, he didn’t think about it really until after it had left him the first time. When he had gave it over to Ned, and the sick feeling of regret boiled up inside of him soundlessly before he even had the chance to take it back. 

If he were to be honest with himself, he’d wished he’d never felt that way about it. 

Ned stands at shoulder length with him when he pulls the curtains back and switches on the light. Curiousness veils behind the murky brown of his eyes as they dance over Duck’s face for a sign of reaction. He’s waiting, albeit there is a short wave of impatience in him when Duck doesn’t do anything at first but stand there, and the anticipation wanes. 

“ Well?” Ned presses. 

Duck takes a moment to recollect himself out of his thoughts before he takes it. The hilt he remembers isn’t as terribly wide but he doesn’t ignore the way his fingers grasp it, warm in his palm. Doesn’t ignore that gut feeling of home and familiarity. 

The edge is wicked and the handle still fits him like a custom glove, like he was born for it. It is all at once fittingly wistful yet unfamiliar and he suddenly feels unsteady like standing on the edge of thin ice. 

And for the first time, Duck can see some semblance of beauty to Beacon --a jagged symmetrical spire, gleaming silver even in the baked ash-haze of its decorative hilt. It really is something. 

He’s been away from it for what’s feels like half a millennium, but he knows it like the back of his hand. Fleetingly, the word ‘home’ brushes through his mind, but it feels alien and meaningless and a little bit wrong when he thinks about it. 

“Duck?” Ned says, gently. 

Duck takes a sharp breath through his nose, shakes off the weird reverie. “ Yeah sorry it’s just..been a long time.” 

The after effect feels right again, like the hole in his chest is suddenly filled up and he feels...right. 

He feels right as he should. 

It’s not as heavy as he remembers it, less so when he twirls it to life and it speaks to him in that same haughty voice he can’t stand but also can’t ignore anymore. And Ned stands back from the case, bewildered eyes torn to the sound of its voice. 

He tucks Beacon into the safety of his hoister upon his back, further silencing it, and he feels complete again. 

* * *

He holds the sword and its weightlessness doesn’t go unnoticed in the grip of his palms. It is slick and light like that of air, pushing through his fingers as he glides a strike to the beast’s side. 

Piercing in towards the chest to cut deep. It doesn’t have that heavy weight to it like it used to,doesn’t have that heedy difficulty to it like it used to. 

Despite running for so long from the truth, and having no experience to this new strange thing. He finds that it is more easier to handle than anything he’s ever had to do in his life. 

This atomic wake in abilities, the movement of it comes easy, like he’s been training his whole life for this. Like he’s been ready this whole time. 

And he doesn’t know if that scares him more than the beast itself. 

* * *

When the smoke clears, Duck finds himself flat on his back. 

The air is smoggy and dense around him, making it hard to see, but his nose flairs with sulfur and he breathes in smoke. 

He starts choking on it immediately. 

In the distance, he thinks he hears shouting but isn’t sure. 

He doesn’t even have time to register the hand that grabs for him, doesn’t take notice of Mama watching him with dark solemn eyes as he comes to sit up, catch his breath. 

Her eyes are ringed with shadows, she looks bruised, tired and haunted, but she has Aubrey, and Aubrey is a staggering battered resemblance of Mama in some way. Bruised and battleworn. In the likelihood that they wear their scars on their skin like dotted stars against the night. 

He notes the way Aubrey looks. There’s a new scar on her lip, a broken nose, a strange tan-line across her cheeks and around her eyes and neck and hands and her hair seems singed slightly, skin peeling with fire and wind burn. Her lips are chapped, cracking split at one corner but she isn’t crying, that’s for sure. She’s seems misty, quiet, which he would have found unusual had the situation been different. 

He can tell she’s favoring one leg, and her head is bent slightly in a way that suggests head and neck trauma. Blood finds home at the scruff of her sneakers, a tear in her pants that wasn’t there before.Her studded jacked ripped and sweat stained. 

She looks like some kind of battle-worn soldier, tired and worn down at the seams, eyes dark and murky as the tar that scatters her body like thick splatters of paint. 

And Ned, Ned is-- 

He is not as well put off as the others, he is beside Duck still, not flat on his back but bent at his knees, trying to hold himself up steadily. 

His face is stressed, torn bitterly deep with scars upon his arms and near his head. His coat is in tatters. _( His favorite coat no less, Duck remembers. It's one of Ned's favorites- and a classic at that.)_ But he is also quiet, watching Duck carefully, fixed concern twitches beneath the brows of his tired gaze. 

“Duck?” Aubrey says, throat cracking-dry. 

His sword clatters out of his hands, and he sags back, head meeting the harsh rock. Out of breath and his throat is too clogged with smoke to really air out his words. But he finds it in himself to get up, climb back up to his feet at a more steadier beat. 

Aubrey seems to follow out of Mama’s grasp, obviously more out of that wounded stance she held, a fast twitch in her legs, taking careful cautious steps. 

” We did it.” she says, buttery smile meeting his eyes, and then she falls. 

He doesn’t even register whatever it is that is happening, until she slips up and her slumping shoulders find purchase with the arm of his ranger jacket. Mama tries to go for her first, but his reflexes catches Aubrey before she hits his chest. 

She smells like blood, dirt and gun powder, and he’s thinking that’s not what a kid as young as her should smell like- like war. But Ned comes forward, and he smells like sulfur and dried up shit, and Duck and him share a moment between the eyes. 

And it’s so surreal, he feels as though this should all be a dream of some kind. That they all shouldn’t be here now. They should be at home somewhere, cozy and warm and safe from any dangers that may tear at them in the night. Not here. 

Not out here bruised and bloody and barely surviving and unable to walk. 

And these people, are people he should not know at all. 

But he is glad to have known such powerful people. 

And he feels good knowing the battle is over and no lives had been risked. 

When Mama begins to collect the three of them, after they’ve calmed down and the fire is swept away in a blur. He finds Aubrey still swaying and unfocused like a baby deer first learning to walk. 

And he settles her under his arm as he and Ned walk her back to the car Mama has. 

Wounds still new, make complications for their back and legs, and everything else. 

Ned adorns his with some sense of pride, like an animal proudly adorning their scars from a victorious battle, despite the annoyance in his leg and the way the smell of sweat and feces sticks to his skin and clothes. Bruisey purple shadows under his eyes like war paint. 

Aubrey adorned hers like a ragged fighter should. She seems almost nuclear in her stance. All blistering and intense even as she’s broken down to a fragile state, she is fiery and warm against Duck's shoulder, and her mouth still cracks with a smile, blood caked in the teeth as they walked together, putting weight on to each other like they're afraid they'll break apart and collapse if they don't. 

He helps her into her seat in the car and she slumps against it like a sack of bricks, resting her head against the hard case of her seat, blood sleeping through the ruins of her studded jacket. 

He hope she gets the rest she needs, she damn well deserved it. (They all do, but this one he feels has done more than either of them could have in the spanned amount of time the battle had driven on for. ) 

She is a strong girl-a willing spirit made from sharp jagged edges and tender valliance - and it’s the kind of bravery Duck wishes he had more of in his early life. 

Ned doesn’t fall in however, he seems to limp towards the end of the cave and stares out, let his wounds be lick by the light of the moon somewhere hanging about the trees. His hair is messy and his nose is crooked, there’s cuts across his knuckles and this soft halcyon look in his eyes. 

Duck remembers seeing that same touch of still peacefulness in Ned the day they were out by the lake, in the hot eye of the sun, squinting past the light and laughing at pictures. 

And when Ned turns to look at him, he smiles and limps forward a few steps, staggering yet he makes it. 

“ What a wild fucking night huh?” He says in between walking, in between his arm following behind the shape of Duck’s back as they lean into each other for support. 

He can see clearly now there’s a lot of blood where the hole in Ned's pants leg have been nicked open severely. 

Ned’s words are lighthearted and his eyes smile bright, but the question and the reality of it makes Duck’s lips hurt to smile back. 

He tries to anyway, but it feels a little faithless, strained and clumsy. 

Then Ned tries to straighten himself out, and staggers backwards, uneasy and wobbly as Aubrey had been when they were walking her back to the car and Duck lets his reflexes follow to capture Ned’s arm. 

“ Take it easy there partner..” he says, ignoring his own sore arm as he brings Ned to a standing position. “ You don’t need to push yourself.” 

Ned makes a noise under his breath, something like “I’m too old to be doing this shit” and shakes his head, but allows the help. 

And there’s a calming collection between them, that they both hadn’t taken quite notice of. Walking in time as they keep a steady rhythm so as to not lose their footing or sink into the deep umber of the cave floor. 

The fire has died off behind them and it’s Ned who cuts the silence between the swish of the forest trees and the night time song as he stops to catch himself. 

“ You don’t look as nearly bruised up as I thought you would be.” 

Duck stills and looks to his right. “ I tend to take worst hits.” 

”Oh yeah?” Ned says “What could be worse than twenty good pounds of goopy monster claws smackin’ you around like a fly from a swatter?” 

“ You ever had your eye busted open before?” Duck asks. 

Ned pauses, giving him an incredulous look. 

“One time I got hit by a rock so hard, it damn near busted my eye open. I got it from a boy who didn’t take kindly to me all too well. Trust me when I say that I’ve taken worst hits before, and this.” he gestures to himself with a quick wave of his free hand, feeling a crooked smile spread thinly across his lips. “Is nothing compared to how that felt years ago. That shit ain’t nothin’ to play with.” 

Ned bursts out laughing. 

It feels a little foreign, but not unfamiliar, and he laughs with him. 

It’s a nice thing, something that adds a calm to a storm he thinks. 

They both take something from each other that night, and don’t bother to look back on the ashes as they step out. 

* * *

He gets home relatively earlier than expected, his chest heaving with guttural rust and smog cramps up the back of his throat like a ill timed cough. 

He feels shaken up,the tremors of ached ribs and creaky ankles make it difficult to reach the door, but he manages and his hand presses for the handle, pushing in, relief feeling up his lungs as he enters and slouches against the hallway wall. 

He still smells like sulfur, can still feel the scars where the beast had settled its claws into him, can still taste the panicked snap of his voice rupturing in as he tried to reach the ears of his friends when the fire had reach a significant high. And the phantom visions of Aubrey and Ned’s figures gathered at the center of it, tall and mystifying before the wall of flames. 

It all felt so real and at the same time, it didn’t. Like a vivid dream, he half still expects to pass out at the end only to wake up and find himself in his bed somewhere late in the night. Memories fake and fading. 

The sword is quiet when he reaches the kitchen. Which is odd at first, because it usually has something to say at this point, but stays relatively silent as if reading the underlying thoughts in Duck’s head. 

It almost comes as a sign of relief when it finally talks, after he puts it away in the cupboard, and Duck is grateful that the silence of the room hasn’t sunk in too deep. 

He washes the dishes to distract himself, gives himself time to settle down and even feed his cat. It’s the only things he can think of to do at the moment since sleep isn’t good enough. 

Something to take his mind off it, or at least until he can actually handle a bit of sleep. For now, working about the house is a nice improvement. 

He finds himself in the living room, collecting dirty cups off the living room table and considering cleaning up his cat’s litter box, when bright blue light illuminates the room. 

The flash is quick and almost draws his eyes to the source, but after many years of having unexpected visitors pop up in his house unprompted, it surprises him none and he continues his chores. He doesn’t have to bother looking up to know who it is. 

Minerva’s still form blinks into his vision, angled and sharp like abstract shapes put together smoothly. Her form flickering back to life like a TV put off pause and when she comes to, her voice finds a joyful pitch. 

“ Duck Newton!” She says, too thrilled, too elated, it makes his teeth hurt. “ You are different I see. You’ve embraced your destiny haven’t you?” 

“ Yeah I guess.” he says, half sighing. 

She laughs, “Ha! As I knew you would. So now that you’ve had a taste of what destiny is like, are you still afraid?” 

He pauses at that, untucks the fold in his collar as he stands there. “ Maybe..” 

“Maybe?” 

“ Well maybe that’s not the right answer but..” he thinks on it, clicks his tongue off the roof of his mouth. “ I think I meant to say that I’m more afraid of it than before.” 

Minerva pauses, her form waivers for just a second, a blink too slow maybe. There's an uncertainty to his words she can’t comprehend. But he isn’t quite sure what it is, the emotion of it sits obscured by the deep blue of her light. 

And it’s funny, he used to be able to see past it. Make sense of whatever she’s feeling. 

“ More afraid?” She says, and it’s spoken out like a surprise. “Even with the weapon of destiny clutched in your hand?” 

He will admit, when he has the sword, it does give off a sense that he can do anything. That is something he won’t deny, but he also can’t ignore that it pulled at his nerves, twisting and yanking on too tight. 

It is an unusual power, almost too powerful he thinks for someone like him. 

“ I don’t know I just… it felt off, like I felt clumsy with it. like I was lot more capable of what I was doing than I should have been.” 

“ Well that’s a good thing isn’t it? It means you’re getting better.” 

“ I don’t know about that, it’s just unnerving is what it is. I’m not crazy about this feeling.” 

She pauses again, thinking. “I can understand your doubt. These things are not easy to handle, but be not afraid, I am sure that you will be fine.” 

“You say that like it’s supposed to be reassuring.” he says, not exactly seeing the point of her words. He’s heard this all before, the same _‘you’re fitted for things bigger than yourself’_ speech. 

She laughs, and it’s loud and bright. “ It should be. For you’ll come to see that with me in your corner, there won’t be anything in the world for you to worry about.” 

_” There’s no reason to be afraid anymore. You’re going to be so impressive someday..”_ and she sounds so much like his mother. 

And he listens and he waits till she’s flickering out of existence, and the room is silent again. 

Duck didn’t say anything afterwards, simply finishing up his chores before pressing on towards his room. He is tired and his muscles ache despite how quickly some wounds have healed and how some are less sore than others. He knows that he will be fine come morning just has he’s always been, just as he always was. 

He knows he will be fine. It’s the others that he’s more worried about. 

And he thinks of Aubrey’s swaying unfocused body in the bitter-orange fray and Ned’s soft gaze against the moonlight, cut knuckles and beaten in face. 

And he thinks he should have been the one walking away with all those scars. 

* * *

He later on in the hours of the next day, finds out that Aubrey got sent to the hospital.  


Her condition had worsened, and she had fallen unconscious on the car ride there. The doctors had swarm around, carrying her and Mama in just as they rolled up with thanks to Barclay and a little help from Dani.  


Hearing about it makes his heart ache just a little bit.  


He decides later on to pay her a visit some time after he's off his hours.

* * *

One visit turns to many. 

And he finds that he’s visiting her almost every day before work. 

* * *

He starts having nightmares again. 

Where he dreams about being the only one coming out of that cave alive. 

The fire consuming them whole, burning and eating away at their flesh and he pictures himself leaving without a scratch. 

The monster’s jagged oozing claw not missing Ned that time where it should and he pictures himself being unable to stop it in time. 

He dreams about those claws sinking deep into the chest of Aubrey and pictures Ned's body lying motionless on the floor and he wakes up more tired than he had before. 

He starts sleeping less and starts visiting them both more. 

* * *

He trains himself to be better, he tells himself he needs to be if he wants to keep doing this. 

To protect the ones he cares about. To keep his friends- _his friends!_ -safe. 

Because one day maybe the monster won’t miss, maybe it’ll be a step too far, maybe it’ll be a wound too deep. 

He trains until his legs ache, until he can’t move, until he’s following a routine almost every afternoon, almost every day. 

It feels weird, not something he’s used to, but good weird. 

So he continues. 

He trains hard so that he doesn’t become the last one standing. 

* * *

Minerva notices the changes and congratulates him on a job well done. 

Even as her form shows no regard to emotion, he can tell she is beaming with pride. 

He’s doing well, despite the minor reluctance, and he still gets his ass handed to him, but it’s still something. 

It’s still progress. 

“ You’ve done well today.” she says, after they’ve done their initial sparring match. 

Duck is on the ground, Beacon still gripped tightly in his hand. He is tired and it shows well on his face. 

Minerva chides him on his technique, tells him to keep on practicing, and before she leaves, tells him to get some more sleep. 

He doesn’t tell her he would if he could. 

* * *

He doesn’t know what his future has in stored for him, or for the rest of them. 

But he hopes it’s good things. 

On behalf of everything he’s been through, he deserves it, he definitely deserves it. 

* * *

And when the next hunt comes, he doesn’t let himself run away this time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the bit at the end with Aubrey is a little divergent but not too much.  
> Anyways, I love Duck and he deserves the world thanks for coming out to my ted talk.


End file.
